


Soft Target

by LydiaBSlade



Series: Destination Unknown [12]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Military, Anal Sex, Angst and Porn, BenArmie AU, Eventual Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Racism, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Referenced Combat Violence, Uniform Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 11:42:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21270479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LydiaBSlade/pseuds/LydiaBSlade
Summary: Continuing to visit Ben Solo every time he has a free weekend is just a practical, safe alternative to hooking up with strangers, Hux tells himself. But practicality has its limits.





	Soft Target

**Author's Note:**

> Please see endnotes for a few additional warnings.

“Where are you?” Ben asks. “It sounds really loud.”

“I’m at the rodeo.”

“You’re where?”

“The rodeo!” Hux shouts into his phone. A small girl sitting nearby in the bleachers glances over at him, looking mildly alarmed. 

Ben laughs. “Wait, seriously? An actual rodeo?”

“Yes,” says Hux grimly. “It’s Military Appreciation Night, so it’s free. I think this may be the most concentratedly American thing I’ve ever done.” 

“Did you dress up? Do you have a cowboy outfit now?”

“_No._” In a concession to what he imagines are the local sensibilities, Hux is wearing jeans instead of linen trousers - a choice which he somewhat regrets on the hot August evening. The furnace-like heat of the Texas summer has faded with the setting sun, but the temperature is still in the eighties. 

“You should totally get cowboy boots and leather chaps. When in Rome, right? And you’d look hot.”

“Absolutely not,” Hux says. The crowd around him whoops and cheers. “They’re doing bull-riding now. I think the guy who just fell off managed to stay on for an unprecedented length of time. Or something.”

“You sound like you just arrived from outer space and you’re reporting on the mysterious customs of humans.”

“That’s exactly how I feel,” Hux says. “Earlier they honored the military by bringing out a horse who does tricks. His name is ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’ and he raises awareness.”

Ben laughs again. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. Unfortunately.”

“That’s amazing,” Ben says. “Anyway, you’ll definitely need to go to at least one more of these.”

“Why? Do you want to go to a rodeo when you visit?”

“Sure,” Ben says. “But the main reason you need to go to another one is so that you can tell everyone that it isn’t your first rodeo.”

“Oh my god,” Hux says, “I’m hanging up on you.”

***

Hux has been stationed at Fort Hood for three months, which is just about enough time to convince him that he probably should have tried to extend his tour in Korea for as long as possible. In spite of the distance and the language barrier and the daily tedium of his job, he now recalls Seoul’s subways and neon lights and all-night coffee shops with a kind of homesickness. Central Texas is altogether more foreign. Hux finds himself gloomily frequenting the Korean grocery store in downtown Killeen, buying sacks of frozen dumplings that are a sad substitute for the fresh ones that he used to be able to buy every night just outside post. 

Towards the end of his time in Korea, his branch manager had told Hux in no uncertain terms that after his “gap year fucking around in Asia” he should expect to go to a unit that was about to deploy. Hux had no objection to that, but he had asked if there was any possible way that he could go and do something other than the battalion-level work he had been slogging through for the past year. His next assignment was likely to be a full three years, and Hux couldn’t face the idea of spending that much more of his life managing the arms room and writing people up for security violations. 

As a result, he had been put on orders to join the Strategic Action Group at Fort Hood - a unit that was supposed to be able to get inside the enemy’s minds and predict how they would respond to U.S. actions. Hux found an Army field manual on red-team operations and read it from cover to cover; it certainly sounded much more interesting than anything he had done in the Army to date.

There was just one problem: when he arrived at Fort Hood, no one seemed to know where the Strategic Action Group was physically located. The NCO at the in-processing office suggested that they might be at the corps headquarters: Hux went there and wandered around, being peered at suspiciously by senior officers and feeling increasingly idiotic, until a soldier who was guarding the building told him confidently that the office he was looking for was in a different building on the other side of post. Hux drove there immediately in the cheap, reliable Toyota he had just purchased (he had gotten his driver’s license during the summer after he graduated from West Point, although driving continued to be a kind of white-knuckled emotional event for him), only to meet blank stares from a group of soldiers who thought that the Strategic Action Group might be located “in that big grey building down past the motor pool.”

After two full days of this, Hux returned to the in-processing office, thoroughly irritated, and demanded answers. The NCO who had originally sent him to the corps headquarters scratched his head, looking perplexed. “Let’s call the general’s secretary,” he suggested. “She knows everything around here, pretty much. She might know what’s going on.”

The general’s secretary did, in fact, know what was going on. “There is no Strategic Action Group,” she told Hux. “They only exist on paper. We use those personnel for other staff jobs.”

“Oh,” said Hux, feeling as if he had somehow stepped into an open manhole without noticing it until just then. “But - but I’m supposed to be on orders to join them.”

“We’ll find something for you to do,” she said briskly. “What are you good at?”

“Um,” said Hux, trying to hastily marshal his elevator speech, “well, I’m an intelligence officer, and I majored in electrical engineering at West Point and earned a national award for a robot I designed - “

“We don’t really design many robots here at the corps headquarters,” she said drily. “But you said you’re an intel officer - I’m sure one of the line battalions could use a smart lieutenant.”

Hux had a sudden, sinking vision of three more years spent processing security clearances and hanging stern warnings over the printer. “Wait,” he said desperately. “I’m also a good writer and researcher - I minored in military history and one of my papers on the Battle of Fredericksburg was published in an academic journal - “

“Oh,” she said, sounding more interested now. “In that case we might be able to use you. General Tarkin needs a new speechwriter.”

Which was how, against all odds, Hux managed to find himself doing work that he actually enjoyed, at least some of the time. It had never before occurred to Hux that he would want to be a speechwriter, and he was afraid at first that the general might expect him to come up with humorous anecdotes or inspirational stories about sports, both of which Hux felt were beyond his powers. 

Fortunately, as it developed, General Tarkin was not much given to jokes or football analogies. He preferred references to the Third Armored Corps’ glorious past, especially to the exigencies of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive and to their exploits as part of Patton’s Third Army during World War II. Hux had no trouble summoning stirring rhetoric on these and similar subjects, even when called upon to provide speeches for routine changes-of-command and other unheroic events, like the rededication of a Fort Hood gate in honor of a local businessman.

Watching General Tarkin at work also had a certain fascination for Hux. The general was unfailingly polite and almost never raised his voice, but everyone seemed terrified of him nonetheless. He had a way of asking questions during briefings that seemed entirely innocuous to speakers who had a thorough grasp of their material, but which reduced less competent officers to a state of sweating panic. Hux - who was always obsessively prepared - had long been both jealous and contemptuous of the sort of handsome, confident male officer who seemed to expect to bluff his way through his Army career with minimal effort; he found it deeply gratifying to watch General Tarkin publicly dismantle their pretenses. 

Living in Killeen, however, was not quite as rewarding. The town, Hux soon learned, was sharply divided by the highway. The south side, where Hux found a cheap one-bedroom apartment in a deeply forgettable complex called “The Pinelands” (“That sounds like a rehab facility,” Ben remarked when he heard about it, “or maybe someplace where you go to die of consumption in the nineteenth century”), was merely boring and suburban. The north side had most of the bars and restaurants, as well as a startlingly high murder rate. 

Hux learned about the entertainment options on the north side primarily from the posted Off-Limits List on the bulletin board outside his office, which warned soldiers to stay away from a number of establishments with names like “The Boom-Boom Room” and “Lucky Louie’s Cowgirl Cafe.” Judging from the blotter reports that made their way across Hux’s desk, the Off-Limits List seemed to be doing very little to dissuade Fort Hood’s soldiers from being drugged, assaulted, or robbed (either by other soldiers, or by enterprising locals) in the vicinity of these forbidden locations. 

“I’m glad you’re getting out and doing fun local stuff, anyway,” Ben says, later, when Hux calls him back after the rodeo. “I kind of figured you might just hide in your room reading military history like a hermit.”

“Ben,” Hux says, somewhat exasperated, “I have literally done everything that you could possibly do to entertain yourself in the greater Killeen area without getting arrested. I went to the Shriners’ circus. I went to a gun show. I went to a community theater production of ‘West Side Story.’ I even went to the Bell County Museum over in Temple.”

Ben is laughing. “How was that?”

“They have the world’s largest collection of mustache cups.”

“Mustache cups?” 

“Yes. They’re teacups that have a special little shelf that keeps your mustache from dipping into whatever you’re drinking. I would’ve got you one from the gift shop, except that I refuse to endorse your hipster facial-hair choices.” Lately Ben has been reshaping his typical scruffiness into a patchy mustache and a goatee; Hux disapproves deeply. 

“You weren’t complaining about my facial hair when I was eating you out last time I saw you. You seemed into it, actually.”

“I was effectively distracted,” Hux says primly. “That isn’t the same as an endorsement.” In fact Ben’s obnoxious goatee had felt surprisingly velvety and soft brushing along the sensitive insides of Hux’s thighs; the memory raises the fine hairs on the back of Hux’s neck and makes him shiver. He has no intention of admitting that to Ben, however.

Hux has flown out to see Ben a few times since Ben’s trip to Korea, spending his leave days and long weekends in the single room Ben is renting on the fourth floor of a townhouse in Brooklyn. Aside from the pervasive smell of pot that permeates the building, it reminds Hux very much of Ben’s childhood bedroom: the same light-filled dormer windows; the same unreliable shared bathroom; the same radiator hissing ferociously next to the bed in winter; and the same jumble of canvases and art supplies. Ben’s portrait of Hux, now finished in oil paints, always seems to be displayed prominently somewhere, even though Hux makes a point of sliding other canvases in front of it whenever he visits. In the painting, Hux’s robe is falling open over his chest and thighs, and he’s frowning at the viewer, his gaze direct and challenging, as if he’s daring them to comment. He looks surprisingly vulnerable too, somehow. The whole effect makes Hux deeply uncomfortable.

Hux’s most recent visit had been over the Fourth of July weekend. He and Ben had spent most of the holiday in bed together, naked and sweating in the summer heat, in spite of the box fan precariously balanced at the foot of the bed. When it got dark, they pulled on jeans and climbed the fire escape to the roof, sitting on the tar paper in the hot wind to watch the fireworks explode over the East River. 

“Why don’t you go down to Austin sometime?” Ben is asking. “Austin’s supposed to be a cool city.”

“That’s what most of the other lieutenants do on the weekend, but I’m not interested in live music or girls from UT-Austin,” Hux says. The hour-plus drive at Texas highway speeds is really more of an obstacle, but Hux doesn’t want to admit how anxious driving still makes him. “Also, my father keeps telling me to drive down there to see the Old Chisholm Trail, so now I’m avoiding it as a matter of principle.”

“What’s the Old Chisholm Trail?”

“Apparently the highway between here and Austin is built along the route of this famous trail that they used to drive cattle along. It was in a lot of John Wayne movies.”

“So your father thinks you should just - what?” Ben asks. “Drive along it and think about John Wayne?”

“I suppose,” Hux says. “He loves those movies. He’s much more interested in Fort Hood than he’s ever been in anything else I’ve ever done.” 

“Poor Hux,” Ben says sympathetically. “Don’t worry, I’m interested in you.”

“Thanks.”

“You can even call me ‘Daddy’ if you want.”

“Ugh, no,” Hux says. “Please never say that again.”

Ben laughs. “Not into that?”

“No, not remotely. I can’t imagine anything less sexy than thinking about my father during sex.”

“Calling me ‘Daddy’ isn’t supposed to make you think about your actual father!”

“Then what is it supposed to do?”

“Never mind,” Ben says. “Anyway, when I come visit, maybe we can do another road trip and go see the fun parts of Texas. Instead of just hanging out in Killeen and going to, like, the cat show at the community center.”

“The cat show was actually quite interesting,” Hux says indignantly. “I learned a lot about the different breeds.”

“And you watched people get attacked by very expensive cats.”

“It was more action-packed than I expected,” Hux agrees.

“Did you ever find out what happened to that lady who got attacked by her cat?”

“No, I have no idea,” Hux says. “The last I saw of her, some other lady was holding the cat down by its neck and yelling ‘Medic! Medic!’ like they were in a war movie.” Ben laughs. Hux takes a deep breath. “Ben - speaking of cats, I actually need to ask you for a favor. A big one.”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“Can you take care of Millicent when I deploy?” 

Millicent had adopted Hux in Korea, where he had woken up on a cold January morning to discover that a large, sleek orange cat had taken his open window as an invitation to warm herself in the patch of sunlight on his couch. Pets were not allowed in government housing, but no one seemed to have informed her of that. She responded to his hesitant attempts to shoo her by winding endearingly between his legs and rubbing her head against him. She was still there when he came home from work, and he began buying food for her. Later, he named her after his mother. 

“Wait,” Ben is saying. “I mean, I probably can, but are you just, like, making plans in general? Or are you actually deploying?”

“I’m actually deploying.”

“What?” Ben says sharply. “Where are you going? When do you leave?”

“I’m going to Afghanistan,” Hux says. “To Kabul. I leave sometime in early October.”

“What the fuck? That’s in, like, six weeks! And I thought you were working as a speechwriter! Why the fuck do they need to send speechwriters to a war zone?” 

“My unit is deploying, so I’m deploying,” Hux says evenly. “The general I work for is going to take over as the deputy commander of the multinational force in Afghanistan.”

“Did you just find this out? When were you going to tell me?”

“I - I’ve known for a while,” Hux says uncertainly. “I just - I didn’t think - “ 

“What? That it wouldn’t matter to me? What the fuck, Hux!” 

Actually what Hux had been thinking was that his upcoming departure seemed like a likely time for Ben to cut his losses and end this - whatever it is that they’ve been doing for most of the past year. They still haven’t discussed it. Hux feels a bit like a frog that has somehow found itself in slowly-boiling water: it began with his Facebook friend request, then the phone call, then Ben’s visit to Korea, and now somehow they’ve arrived at a point where they talk almost every day and Hux looks at cheap flights to New York every time he has a free moment at work. Hux has been telling himself that, really, this is just a practical alternative to furtive hookups with strangers: less risk of disease, less risk of accidentally going home with a serial killer, possibly less risk of being caught by his command. But practicality has its limits.

“I should have told you sooner,” he says finally. “I didn’t know how you’d react.”

“Yes, you should’ve! I’ve been trying to save money to come visit you - I hate asking my mother for money all the time - but I would’ve just asked her if I’d known you were leaving!” Ben’s voice cracks. 

Hux swallows. “My unit has two weeks of block leave in September,” he says. “I can come see you then. And bring Millicent. If that’s okay.”

“Yeah - sure - I don’t think my lease allows pets, but whatever, fuck it.” Ben takes a deep breath. “I’m going out for a run. Before I wind up punching something.”

“Okay,” Hux says unhappily, as Ben hangs up. He sits down on the floor and lets Millicent curl up warmly in his lap. Through the open window, the late-summer buzz of cicadas sounds like distant helicopters. 

***

“I guess I should have known this was going to happen eventually,” Ben says gloomily, a few days later. “I mean, I’ve seen all the news headlines about the troop surge in Afghanistan. I just didn’t know you, personally, were going to be surging.”

“I think my unit would have deployed even without the surge,” Hux says, “but yes, my boss will be the deputy commander for the surge troops.”

Ben sighs. “I just wish you’d told me. I wish I’d known we had so little time.”

“I’m not dying,” Hux says tartly, pushing down a twinge of guilt. “You make it sound like I have terminal cancer. I’ll be back in a year.” _The real question is, what will_ you _be doing during that year_, Hux thinks.

“Or it could be more than a year,” Ben says tightly. “Right?”

“Or maybe less. And I should have two weeks of R&R sometime in the middle of that.” Hux already knows exactly what he wants to spend his two weeks of vacation doing. But he’s long since decided that he would rather live with the uncertainty than ask Ben to make plans with him and be refused. 

“I still don’t understand why you can’t write speeches in Texas and just, like, email them to your boss. Don’t they have email in Afghanistan?”

“I’m not necessarily going to be just writing speeches. The general said he might have more interesting work for me to do once we get there.”

“What does that mean?” Ben asks suspiciously. “You’ll still be working in an office, right? Not out hunting for Osama or whatever?”

“Yes, I should still be in an office - he may want me to do some sort of intelligence analysis, I would imagine,” Hux says. He sighs. “Really, I probably should have tried to go to one of the ground combat units. I probably still should try to transfer to one.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?” Ben snarls. “You really want to get shot at that bad?”

“Everyone keeps telling me that deploying with a line unit is the most important thing you can do as a junior intel officer. And that it’s way more interesting in combat than the kind of garrison stuff I was doing in Korea.”

“Why, exactly?”

“Because you’re with the troops on the ground and you can really get to have an understanding of the kind of intelligence support they need,” Hux explains, somewhat impatiently. “You can go out on combat patrols with them and everything.”

“I really don’t understand why you think that getting blown up by the Taliban is going to somehow fix whatever you think is wrong with your life!” Ben’s voice is rising, sounding increasingly ragged and angry. “You have a safe job that you seem to like, but you still want to volunteer for this shit? You’ve seen the news - people come back with brain damage, with missing limbs, horrible burns - “

“I know all that,” Hux snaps. “And I know you don’t understand. You’ve never understood anything I wanted to do.”

“I understand more than you think! I blame your dad for most of this, honestly.”

Hux raises his eyebrows. “Really? I blame him for all sorts of things, but he’s hardly at fault here. He never wanted me to join the military. And he’s certainly not responsible for sending me to Kabul.”

“I’ll tell you why,” Ben says sharply. “Because he fucked with your head and made you feel like you’re not enough of a real man. And then West Point came along and told you that the way to be a man is to go out and get yourself shot in the face. And for some reason you believe it!”

Hux sits up stiffly in his chair, as if Ben had just stuck a needle into his spine. “I’m not going to just sit here while you insult me,” he says furiously. “I don’t need any of this.”

“Of course you would say that! Of course, you don’t need this, you don’t need anything, fuck - fuck it, fuck this!” There’s a crashing sound on the other end of the line, then silence. 

“What was that?” Hux says. “Hello?” Ben seems to have hung up. Hux stares at his phone blankly for a moment, then sets it down carefully, trying to breathe normally. He looks around for Millicent, who is nowhere to be found. 

Outside the window, it’s just after sunset; the parking lot is bathed in a pink glow. The breeze shakes a row of dusty wildflowers that have sprung up through a crack in the pavement. 

A few minutes later, Hux’s phone rings. It’s Ben. Hux hesitates, then picks it up on the fourth ring. “What now?” he demands. “Did you think of some more insults you wanted to throw at me?”

“Hux, for a smart person, you’re so fucking dense sometimes,” Ben says. His voice cracks as if he’s trying not to cry. “I’m not insulting you. I’m asking you, please, please, don’t do anything stupid.”

“How is that not an insult?”

Ben breathes in noisily. “Because I’m telling you that I care about you! I’m telling you that I want you to get through your stupid deployment and come home in one piece. To me.”

“Oh,” Hux says blankly, feeling as if the wind has been knocked out of him. “Oh - well, I will. I will come back, I promise.”

“You’d better.” Ben sniffs loudly, then laughs a little. “If you think I’m yelling at you a lot now, just wait till you see how pissed I’ll be if anything happens to you. This is nothing, believe me.”

Hux is overwhelmed by a sudden tingling surge of happiness: it feels untrustworthy, like the shimmer of sunlight that makes someone lost in the desert think that they see an oasis ahead. “I believe you,” he says. “And - fine. I won’t try to get transferred to any ground combat units.”

“Thank you,” Ben says. “Sorry, I know I’m interfering with your grand plan to die a glorious death or whatever, but that’s okay. You can be mad at me about it if you want.”

“I will,” Hux says warmly. “You can count on it.”

***

On the last morning of his leave in New York, Hux wakes with Ben wrapped tightly around him from behind, breathing onto his neck. The windows are open, letting in the sound of traffic and the crisp September air. Ben’s bare skin feels furnace-hot on the cool fall day.

“Morning,” Hux says, as Ben stirs against him and kisses the back of his head. He bumps his hips back against Ben hopefully.

“Mmm, hi,” Ben says sleepily, hugging him. Then he sighs deeply. “It’s so crazy to think that you’re, like, sailing off to war today.”

“Try not to think about it, then,” Hux suggests, sucking one of Ben’s fingers into his mouth, then letting go of it with a _pop_. “Anyway, I’m not going to war today. I’ll be in Texas for a couple more weeks.”

“I could fly down with you. If you want.”

“Didn’t you say you’d lose your job if you took any more time off?” Ben is quiet. “It’s okay. I’m just going to be packing and putting all my things in storage and probably getting more vaccinations... you’d be bored.” _And I don’t want to deal with pretending that you’re my roommate or something at the goodbye ceremony,_ Hux thinks. 

Ben rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling. “You said you get a two-week vacation at some point, right? What do you want to do with it?”

Hux bites his lip. “I’m not sure yet. But they’ll give me a plane ticket to anywhere in the world.”

“That could be fun,” Ben says. “Maybe I can save up some money and come meet you in Europe or something.” He grins at Hux. “I’ll even let you drag me to a few war memorials or museums full of mannequins in old uniforms or whatever boring stuff you want to see.”

Hux tries not to look too pleased. “So you do want to see me for R&R then?”

Ben raises an eyebrow at him. “Why wouldn’t I? I mean, I’ll have to work around all the other European vacations I’ve scheduled with my other boyfriends, but we’ll figure it out.” Hux punches him in the side. “Ow!” Ben rolls over on top of Hux, pinning him down. “Did you really think I wouldn’t want to see you?”

Hux shrugs impatiently, his face hot. “I don’t know, I thought you might. Want to move on.”

Ben looks at him sharply. “Why? Do you want to move on?”

“No,” Hux admits. His stomach feels queasy.

Ben shakes his head. “Then you must really think I’m an asshole if you expect me to be like, ‘oh, sorry, you’re going off to war, I better find someone else’s dick to suck for the next year.’”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what is it?” Hux shrugs, feeling intensely relieved. “The only thing is, if I’m going to wait for you, you can’t fuck anyone else either while you’re gone.”

Hux laughs. “In Afghanistan? Who would I sleep with there? I don’t think Craigslist has a ‘Casual Encounters’ page for men in Kabul.”

“You’re going to be on a base full of lonely, horny dudes for a year,” Ben says. “I’m sure you could work something out if you wanted to.”

“It’s not prison, or the British Royal Navy in the eighteenth century,” Hux says. “We don’t just get to a certain point in a deployment and start having all-ranks orgies in the barracks, or whatever happens in all the military porn you watch.” Hux shivers as Ben bites the side of his neck, hard. His mouth is hot. “You know those movies aren’t documentaries, right?”

“Do you always have to crush my dreams?” Ben asks, holding Hux down and nuzzling at his throat, tickling him with his short beard. Hux yelps and kicks at him. “By the way, speaking of military porn, can you get your uniform and boots out one more time? For me?”

Some months earlier, Hux had remarked gloomily to Ben that he couldn’t quite bring himself to throw away his starched battle-dress uniforms or his perfectly-shined inspection boots from West Point, even though they were no longer authorized for wear. Ben had enthusiastically offered to keep them at his place for Hux’s visits. 

“If you want,” Hux says. “But I think I’m running out of ideas. Did you want to do the thing again where I make you strip as punishment for failing a uniform inspection?”

Hux isn’t entirely sure he wants to spend his last day slapping Ben and ordering him around, but he’s pleased to see that the idea seems to have effectively distracted Ben.

“Hmm, maybe,” Ben says, kissing the sensitive skin just below Hux’s ear. He’s starting to get hard against Hux’s thigh. “We could do that. Or, what if you’re my platoon commander - “

“Platoon leader, not commander - “

“ - my platoon leader, whatever, and my roommate comes to you and complains that he keeps walking in on me jerking off and he wants you to punish me for it.”

Hux laughs. “You’re really into getting caught jerking off.”

“I’m a simple man,” Ben says solemnly, “with simple pleasures.”

“I assume you don’t want me to pretend to write you a counseling statement and maybe refer you to the behavioral-health clinic. Which is what I would actually do in that situation.”

Ben laughs. “That might be a little too much realism.”

“All right, just let me go get a glass of water and brush my teeth,” Hux says, wriggling out from under Ben. “I shouldn’t have had so much to drink last night.”

“No, you totally should’ve,” Ben says, pulling on a pair of shorts and following Hux into the shared bathroom across the hall. “You’re a cute drunk. You definitely benefit from the whole loss-of-inhibitions thing.”

“I embarrassed myself, you mean,” Hux says, frowning. 

“No, honestly, you didn’t. I wish you were like that all the time.”

The night before, they had gone out to a dimly-lit Austrian restaurant on the Lower East Side where the bartender was a friend of Ben’s: with both Ben and the bartender encouraging him, Hux had tried most of the specialty cocktails for which the place was apparently famous. There were several other pairs of men who appeared to be there on dates, and Ben and Hux were seated in a back corner booth that was mostly hidden from the rest of the restaurant by a case full of decorative crockery. Some combination of those factors and the alcohol had meant that when Hux stumbled and fell into Ben’s lap on the way back from the bathroom, he had decided that he was comfortable there, and he had remained perched there through dessert. 

“I suppose I shouldn’t do this,” Hux had said as he squirmed in Ben’s lap, halfway through a shared sour-cherry crepe. “There might be cameras.”

“There aren’t any cameras,” Ben had responded, kissing him, “and besides, if you get in trouble, that just means that you don’t have to leave and you can stay here with me.”

In Hux’s drunken state, that had seemed like a strong argument. Also, Ben had been half-hard under him, and his mouth had tasted like the fruit and whipped cream they were eating.

Now, as they stand next to each other brushing their teeth, it’s difficult for Hux not to think about what it might be like to wake up like this with Ben every day. In their own place, even, where the bathroom wouldn’t be cluttered with the detritus left behind by Ben’s numerous housemates and they wouldn’t have to wear plastic slippers in the shower. Hux pushes the thought away. After all, it also isn’t difficult to allow himself to be distracted by the sight of Ben shirtless next to him, with his messy hair hanging in his face, and the faint line of dark fuzz that leads down over his abs into his boxer shorts. 

Back in his room, Ben watches eagerly from the bed as Hux pulls on his uniform and boots. The boots are somewhat smudged from earlier activities; Hux considers ordering Ben to shine them, but decides that Ben will most likely just make a mess of it. He makes a mental note to teach Ben how to shine them properly - some other time, when Ben won’t be too distracted to focus on Hux’s carefully-honed technique.

Fully dressed, Hux frowns at Ben, trying to get into character. Ben is still lounging on the bed in his boxer shorts. “Stand up,” Hux snaps at him. Ben jumps up and stands at attention by the foot of the bed - _at least he’s learned to do that correctly_, Hux thinks, feeling oddly proud. He steps forward, crowding Ben against the wall. “Do you know why I’m here?”

Ben swallows. “No, sir.”

“I think you do,” Hux says, breathing onto Ben’s ear. Ben shivers. “There have been... complaints.”

“What kind of complaints?” Ben asks innocently. 

Hux presses closer, nearly touching him. “Your roommate says that every time he comes in here, you’ve got your cock out and you’re touching yourself. Is that true?”

“I - I’m sorry, sir, I can’t help it - “

“Why not?” Hux inquires, sliding his leather-gloved hand up and down the ridge of Ben’s stiffening cock, through his shorts. Ben breathes in sharply. “Can’t keep this under control?” 

Ben’s eyes flutter shut. “No - no - I can’t - “

“Should I help you with that?” Hux asks, lowering his voice and trying to sound slightly threatening. He’s still massaging Ben’s erection with his gloved hand. The swollen head of Ben’s cock presses up past the waistband of his boxers. Hux rubs his leather-covered thumb over it, lingeringly, and Ben whimpers. “With learning to control yourself, that is.”

“Yes sir - please - “

“Get on your knees,” Hux orders. Ben obeys immediately, looking up at Hux with the eager, adoring expression that always makes Hux feel slightly dizzy, overwhelmed. Ben’s face is flushed, his bitten lips parted. Hux looms over him, bracing his hands on the wall behind Ben’s head. “Spread your legs.” 

Hux slides his boot forward between Ben’s spread thighs, nudging his balls with the toe. Ben groans. “This belongs to me now,” Hux says, trying not to sound too breathless. 

Ben looks up at him a little questioningly, as if he’s wondering whether this is just part of the game or not. Hux opts to forestall that discussion by running the smooth leather toe of his boot up along the shaft of Ben’s cock. Ben squeezes his eyes shut with a choked little sound, biting his lip, then shudders as Hux gently presses his erection back against his stomach with the heel of his boot. 

“This is mine now,” Hux says again, still rolling the sole of his boot over Ben’s cock, through his shorts. “You don’t get to come unless I give you permission, understand?”

“Yes - yes sir - I understand - “ Ben pants. “I won’t even jerk off without your permission - “

“That’s right,” Hux says, beginning to lose the battle to keep his voice under control. His cock is painfully hard now, pressing up against the buttons of his fly. “Even if you’re so hard you can’t stand it, you can’t touch yourself - you have to come find me and earn it - “

“I will,” Ben says eagerly. “I’ll do anything you want - you can bend me over and fuck me, come on my face, anything - “

Hux looks down at him consideringly. One of Hux’s hands still braced on the wall; with the other, he strokes Ben’s hair, then runs his gloved thumb down over Ben’s scar to touch his lips. Ben sucks it into his mouth, biting down on it through the leather. Hux shivers. He runs the toe of his boot up and down the outline of Ben’s erection again, and Ben’s hips spasm against it. 

“Take those shorts off and lie down on the bed,” Hux says. “I want you to fuck me.” 

Ben looks slightly startled, but obeys. It isn’t what they usually do when Hux is dressed like this, and probably isn’t really what Ben wants, but Hux knows that he needs this one more time before he leaves. Hux pulls off his boots and his uniform trousers and grabs the lube and a condom off the nightstand. He kneels over Ben, still in his uniform tunic, straddling Ben’s thighs as he rolls the condom down over Ben’s stiff cock.

Ben squirms under him, letting out a little high-pitched noise as Hux strokes lube up and down the shaft of his cock. His glove is going to be unsalvageable, probably, but Hux doesn’t care.

“Want me to prep you?” Ben asks hoarsely.

“I don’t need it.”

Ben frowns, then squeezes his eyes shut, gasping, as Hux continues to stroke him. The lube squelches against the leather. “It’ll hurt.”

“I don’t care.” 

Ben grins. “You want it that bad, huh?” Hux glares at him. _No, I want it to hurt_, Hux thinks, but doesn’t say. “At least - _fuck_, you’re going to make me come if you keep doing that. Let me eat you out first, sit on my face - “

“Is that what you want?” 

“Yeah,” Ben pants, writhing under Hux, who is still squeezing his cock, enjoying the way his face contorts with pleasure at every stroke. “I need a minute anyway - if I tried to fuck you right now I’d come in like five seconds.”

“And I haven’t given you permission yet,” Hux says, trying to get back into character. He lets go of Ben and crawls upward to straddle his face.

“Yeah - make me earn it - mmm - “ Ben’s hot tongue flickers over Hux’s balls, and lower, between his cheeks, inside him, and Hux shudders. Perched over Ben’s face, holding onto the headboard of the bed, his cock throbs with every swipe of Ben’s tongue. Ben is making small muffled sounds under him, little noises in his throat. 

“That’s enough,” Hux gasps, eventually, once he’s begun to feel desperate to come now, immediately. He moves back down Ben’s body and begins working Ben’s cock into him, a little at a time, and it does hurt, it does, but then the head of Ben’s cock hits that spot that sends pleasure jolting through him, hot and liquid - 

Ben is trembling under him, clutching at the bedsheets with both hands, breathing hard. “You’re so fucking hot,” he groans as Hux finds a rhythm and begins to move, up and down, angling his hips so that Ben’s cock is hitting him exactly where he needs it. “Please - I can’t - I’m going to come - “

“Don’t come until I do,” Hux orders, wrapping his still-slippery hand around his own cock and stroking himself, slamming down on Ben now. Ben lets out a choked sound, his eyes following Hux’s hand. His open mouth is wet and red. His big hands are on Hux’s ass, squeezing him and guiding him up and down. Hux hadn’t given him permission to touch him, but he’s too far gone to care. 

“Oh fuck - please - “ Ben groans, his hips spasming. Hux clenches down around the hot length of him one last time and comes hard, spurting over Ben’s chest with a shout. He collapses forward, riding out the aftershocks as Ben arches his back and slams up into him, shuddering through his own orgasm.

“I’m glad I don’t actually have to wear this uniform anymore,” Hux remarks, after a while. He’s still lying on top of Ben, wearing only his uniform tunic, which is sticking to both of them now. “Getting these stains out would be a nightmare.”

“This is Brooklyn,” Ben says, gently rolling Hux off him so that he can pull off the condom and throw it away. “I’m sure the dry-cleaner on the corner has dealt with much weirder stuff than getting come stains out of an old uniform.”

“Maybe,” Hux says, pulling off the soiled top and reaching for Ben. He tucks his head under Ben’s chin, listening to him breath. He runs a hand idly over Ben’s still-sticky chest and stomach. 

“By the way, do you really want me to ask you for permission every time I come, or were you just saying that?” Ben asks, sliding his hand into Hux’s hair and massaging his scalp gently with his fingers.

“That would be hot,” Hux says, “but I don’t know if it would really be practical. We’ll have to see what the communications systems are like once I get to Afghanistan.”

Ben laughs. “That’s such a _you_ response,” he says. “I ask if you want to play a sex game and you’re, like, ‘First I need to conduct an analysis of the communications systems to see if it would be feasible.’”

Hux punches him lightly in the side. “I’m just looking out for you,” he protests. “I would hate for you to miss out on orgasms because I don’t have WiFi in Afghanistan.”

“That’s so sweet,” Ben says, only semi-sarcastically. He sighs. “This whole situation is just so weird.”

“Why?”

“Like, we’re here in Brooklyn and everything is normal, but you’re actually literally going off to war. I feel like... a war bride or something. Like I should be wearing a hat from the 1940s and waving a lace handkerchief as your train leaves.”

Hux raises an eyebrow. “A war bride? Where did that come from?”

“From this song, I think,” Ben says, reaching out to fiddle with his iPod. “My mom loves it. She had it on at the house last time I was over there and I was like, it’s crazy that this anti-war song from the Vietnam War actually seems relevant.”

“Oh no,” Hux says. 

A woman’s sweet, high voice echoes through the small speakers on Ben’s desk: _Farewell, my wistful Saigon bride... I’m going out to stem the tide..._

“You don’t look much like a wistful bride,” Hux says, looking up at Ben’s scarred face and down the length of him, thinking that, somehow, he always looks too large for any room that he’s in. “Ben, can we turn this off and go eat something? This music makes me feel like we’re lying in bed on the deck of the _Titanic_.”

Ben laughs. _How many children must we kill_, the singer wails, _before we make the wave stand still?_ Hux rolls his eyes. 

Ben stands up and clicks off the iPod. “Speaking of Vietnam,” he says, scrubbing at his chest with a paper towel and reaching for his jeans, “did I tell you that I finally actually talked to my dad about what he was doing there?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yeah, it’s weird,” Ben says, as they dress. “Like, he’s told me a million dumb stories about stuff that he’s gotten up to with his shady friends, and I was always like, whatever, I don’t care. But for some reason he never really talked about Vietnam. Except for the part about how he met my mom at an anti-war rally.”

“I remember you told me that.” Hux debates whether to insist that they shower, but Ben is already heading for the door and Hux is too hungry to argue about it. 

“Yeah, he always said that he really didn’t care about the anti-war movement at that point because he’d already come back from Vietnam,” Ben says. “But he thought my mom was hot and he liked fighting with the cops, so he started going to the protests she organized.”

“That sounds like your father,” Hux says, as they walk down the narrow stairs to the street. “So what happened in Vietnam?”

“Oh, yeah,” Ben says. “So one thing I didn’t realize was that apparently he and my uncle Luke weren’t drafted - they both enlisted. For totally different reasons, of course. My dad wasn’t in school or anything, he was just driving a truck and probably selling weed or something. Knowing my dad. Anyway, he knew he was going to get drafted. So he signed up because that way he’d get to choose what he did. The Navy wouldn’t take him, because he had a prior record for assault. So he signed up to be a personnel clerk in the Army because he figured it’d be safe.”

“But it wasn’t?” Hux asks. They’re walking down the street to the bagel place on the corner now. The sun slants down the rows of old brownstones, glittering on the parked cars. Above their heads, the yellowing leaves of a tree flip suddenly sideways in a gust of wind, exposing their lighter undersides, like a school of fish turning. It occurs to Hux that it’s the first day of fall. 

“No, not really,” Ben says. “Of course it still ended up being way safer than what my uncle signed up for. My uncle probably didn’t even have to get drafted - he had a college deferment - but he decided to enlist as a combat medic. Because he felt like it was unfair for the government to send someone else in his place just because he was in school.”

“That was very principled of him,” Hux says, somewhat impressed.

“Yeah, well, I always told you my uncle was a fucking idiot,” Ben says, rolling his eyes. “I feel like that might be part of why my dad never told me about this stuff. Because he feels like my uncle was a real hero or whatever, and he was just a fuckup. He still won’t tell me how my uncle lost his hand - he says I need to ask him myself if I want to know.” The bagel place is crowded. “Grab that table, I’ll get breakfast.”

Hux sits down in the one remaining table, by the window. A man in a pinkish-grey bathrobe, with a flowered towel wrapped around his head, pushes through the crowd and grabs the back of the other chair. “My friend is sitting there,” Hux says, waving him off. He sits down anyway. “Hey!”

“You can’t save seats,” the man says shrilly. 

“Since when?”

“Because this is New York,” the man says. “If you were from here, you’d know that.”

“I _am_ from here,” Hux says, annoyed. “Seriously, my friend is sitting there. And I was here first.”

“What are you going to do about it? Fight me?” 

Hux looks incredulously at the man, who appears to be in his fifties. He has large, round green eyes, and a sad, jowly face, like a gloomy bulldog. “No, I’m not going to fight you. Just go!”

“Make me.”

Ben comes over a few minutes later with a pair of coffees and two bagels in a paper bag. He looks questioningly at Hux and his unexpected companion. “He sat down and won’t leave,” Hux says, irritably. “He asked if I was going to fight him.”

“Hey, dude, I’m sitting there,” Ben says. “Get lost.” The man turns to look at him, gripping the arms of his chair as if he expects Ben to try to drag him out of it bodily. “Like, now. I’m not in the mood for this bullshit today.”

The man glances up at Ben’s scarred face, then down at his big hands, and gets up reluctantly. He shuffles off, muttering to himself. Ben sits down, shaking his head. Then he laughs. “Maybe that’s just the city’s way of saying goodbye to you,” he says. “I mean, your farewell tour of New York just wouldn’t be complete without a weird dude in a bathrobe trying to fight you over the last seat in a bagel place.”

“Maybe,” Hux says, still nettled. He bites into his bagel. The salty lox and cream cheese spill indulgently over its edges. “At least the bagels here are good.”

Ben is eyeing him mournfully again. “You’re not going to be able to get that where you’re going,” he observes.

“I _know_ that,” Hux says, exasperated. “Don’t remind me. What were you saying about your dad?”

“Oh, yeah.” Ben runs his hand through his hair with a sigh. “So my dad enlisted as a personnel clerk, right, but what he didn’t know was that that MOS includes postal operations, apparently. And he already had a license as a truck driver. So he wound up having to deliver the mail on all these crazy routes, like, little roads through the jungle and whatever, and sometimes guys he couldn’t even see would take shots at them. It was just him and one other guy and their M-16s in the truck, with the windows down, no protection at all.”

“We still have that problem with our supply convoys,” Hux says. “We wouldn’t send one truck out by itself like that now, but our supply trucks still get ambushed all the time - the insurgents know that they’re a soft target and that they’re carrying stuff they want.”

“Yeah, exactly,” Ben says. “So my dad said he got pretty good at shooting with one hand and driving with the other, and he’s pretty sure they would’ve gotten killed if he hadn’t had so much practice trying to out-drive the cops as a teenager. But other mail trucks got ambushed all the time, and after he’d been there about four months he said a bullet came through the windshield and hit the seat next to his ear. Like, if it had been a half-inch over it would’ve killed him. And he was like, ‘I have to get out of here or I’m going to die.’”

“So what’d he do?”

“He went back to the base and punched his company commander in the face,” Ben says, grinning. “So they sent him back to headquarters while they decided whether to court-martial him.”

Hux laughs. “I guess that’s one way to handle the situation.”

“That’s my dad,” Ben says, sounding proud of him for a moment. “Anyway, while he was there, they were like, ‘Oh, you’re a clerk, we need someone to type this paperwork for us,’ and one of the things he had to type up was a manifest of guys who were done with their tours and about to ship out home. So he added his name to the bottom of the list.”

“Really?” Hux says, shaking his head,  
half-laughing. “That didn’t work, did it?”

“It did! He was on the next flight out. He said they seemed kind of confused when he turned up on the other end, but no one really cared enough to do anything about it. He spent the rest of his enlistment cutting grass at some base in New Jersey.”

Hux swallows the last bite of his bagel. “I hate to disappoint you,” he says, “but I don’t think that will work as a strategy to get me out of Afghanistan. They have digital manifests these days.”

“I figured.” Ben sighs. “My dad did have two pieces of advice for you, though.”

“He did?”

“Yeah.” Ben tilts his paper coffee cup to get the last of it. “His first advice is, ‘Never volunteer.’”

“I’ve heard that one before,” Hux says. “Lots of old veterans will tell you that.”

“Well, you should listen to them. Anyway, his other advice is, ‘Always double-tap.’”

Hux raises an eyebrow. “I’m fairly sure that’s a war crime.” Two girls sitting at a nearby table glance over at them nervously. 

“Not according to my dad,” Ben says cheerfully. “The way my dad explained it, if you shoot a guy and then shoot him again to finish him off when he’s already wounded on the ground, _that’s_ a war crime. But, he said, if you shoot the guy twice in the chest before he hits the ground, that’s just being thorough.”

The two girls are now staring at them in genuine horror. “Maybe we should go,” Hux suggests, standing up.

Ben follows his glance towards the two girls, who immediately look away when Ben turns in their direction. “What’s your problem?” Ben snarls at them, standing up. “My fucking boyfriend here is in the Army and he’s about to leave for fucking Afghanistan. I’m trying to pass on what my fucking Vietnam-veteran dad said about how not to get killed in combat.”

The two girls are frozen, staring at their table. “Sorry,” one mutters.

“Ben,” Hux hisses, grabbing his elbow, “you’re scaring people. Let’s go.”

Ben tenses, then turns towards the door, shaking his head. “Thank you for your service,” one of the girls calls to Hux, as they leave. 

“Thanks,” Hux says over his shoulder. “What the hell was _that_?” he asks Ben, irritably, once they’re outside.

Ben exhales slowly, shoving his fists into his pockets. “Sorry. I’m a little stressed out.”

“I can see that.”

Ben looks at him, his dark eyebrows furrowed fiercely. “Are you going to get pissed at me now for calling you my boyfriend in front of all those people?”

“No,” Hux says. “I’m not.” He sighs. “But I should probably go back and finish packing. I need to leave for the airport soon.”

Ben is still looking at him intently. He grabs Hux, crushing him into an embrace that’s somewhere between a bear hug and a headlock. Hux tenses instinctively, then forces himself to relax. Ben cradles the back of Hux’s head in his hand, making a sound in his ear that sounds like he’s trying not to cry. “You’ve really chilled out about some things,” Ben says softly, after a moment. “I’m glad.”

“I guess I feel like I have less to lose now,” Hux says, muffled against Ben’s shoulder. “I’ve got my West Point degree; if the Army decides they don’t want me after paying for my education, maybe that’s their problem.” He’s quiet for a moment, breathing in the familiar, comforting smell of Ben’s leather jacket. “Also my father and his friends would never come to this part of Brooklyn.” 

Ben laughs. “Sounds like you’re slowly working your way towards being able to tell all those assholes to go fuck themselves.”

“You two are very sweet, but you’re blocking the sidewalk,” snaps a man in leather pants and an orange fedora, ducking around them. 

“Fuck off,” Ben responds, tightening his arms defiantly around Hux. 

***

Waiting on the street corner for a cab an hour later, Ben and Hux stare bleakly at each other. Hux feels bruised and tired, sore and aching somewhere under his skin. Up to this point, Hux had managed fairly successfully to avoid thinking about the fact that he actually does have to leave. Now he feels very much the way he did shortly before basic training - the same rushing sense of being borne forward inexorably by time, swept towards a destination that he can’t yet see or imagine. 

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Ben says abruptly, reaching into his jacket. “I want you to take this with you. For luck.” He holds out a tiny drawstring bag, made of yellow silk. 

Hux takes it, confused. “What is it?”

Ben shrugs. “Don’t worry about it. Just stick it in your backpack or something.”

Hux opens the bag. Inside it is a tiny metal sculpture encased in plastic. “It’s... an Indian goddess?”

“A Tibetan Buddhist goddess. Tara. She’s supposed to be the embodiment of compassion. Who protects you from all fears.”

Hux tilts his head curiously at Ben. “Where did this come from? What happened to ‘all religions are bullshit’?”

Ben sighs. “I didn’t really want to get into this with you,” he says, “because I knew you’d be a dick about it, but after my face got cut up I started going to these meditation sessions at Tibet House and... yeah. Just take it with you.”

Hux laughs. “Really, you’ve started meditating now? You’ve always made fun of your uncle for doing exactly that.”

“He does all that Zen crap, Tibetan Buddhism is different,” Ben says defensively. “We meditate on dead bodies and stuff, it’s a lot more goth. Before I got hurt, I actually only went to the first class because there’s a hot guy who works in the gift shop there and he invited me.” Hux frowns. “But nothing happened with him, I think he’s straight. Anyway, since I got hurt - it helps. Just keep it with you.”

“If you want,” Hux says, slipping it into his pocket. He looks up at Ben, who is glaring at a point just past Hux’s shoulder. “At least I can feel confident that if anyone ever tells my chain of command that I have a secret hipster boyfriend who does Tibetan meditation and has terrible facial hair, they’ll never believe it of me.”

Ben snorts. “Good,” he says. “Does that mean I can kiss you goodbye?”

Hux glances around, out of habit. A group of women in colorful yoga pants are waiting for the light to change. An elderly man is proceeding slowly down the sidewalk towards them, pushing a small curly-haired dog in a dark blue stroller. No one is paying any attention to them. 

“Yes,” Hux says. “Go ahead.”

Ben wraps one arm around Hux’s waist, pressing their bodies together. He cups the back of Hux’s head in his other hand and leans in. His mouth is soft and hot, and Hux feels the familiar thrum of desire through the ache in the pit of his stomach. Ben hums happily as Hux’s tongue presses past his lips for a moment. 

“I should go,” Hux says reluctantly. He breaks away gently and steps into the street to hail a passing cab. Ben follows him, his hand still possessively on Hux’s waist. 

“Call me when you get there,” Ben says as Hux slides into the back of the cab. He kisses Hux briefly one more time. 

“I will,” Hux says, then, to the driver, “I need to go to JFK.” 

“Got it,” says the driver. “You going to close the door or what?”

Ben looks at Hux for a moment as if there’s something more he wants to say. Then he pulls away abruptly and slams the car door. Hux slides his hand into his pocket to touch the tiny silk bag that Ben had just given him, trying to breathe normally. He watches Ben through the rearview mirror as the cab pulls away from the curb: he remains in the street, scowling, his fists jammed into the pockets of his jacket, until the cab turns a corner and he disappears from view.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Hux is stationed at Fort Hood in this fic and is not happy about it. No offense to any Texas readers - I think Texas is wonderful in many ways but the area around Fort Hood is kind of terrible (sorry).
> 
> \- During the sex scene, Hux is dominating Ben but then asks Ben to fuck him. 
> 
> \- Implied/Referenced Racism: There’s a brief quote from Joan Baez’s anti-war song “Saigon Bride,” which is a beautiful piece of music but also unfortunately a product of its time in terms of the way it talks about Vietnamese people. The fic also includes an extended discussion of the Vietnam War and a brief discussion of Buddhism - neither is overtly racist but they all reflect a white American perspective that isn’t especially nuanced.
> 
> \- Ben blows up at some bystanders who are not responsible for the reasons why he’s so stressed out.
> 
> \- There’s no graphic violence, but there’s some discussion of combat violence in Afghanistan and Vietnam that could possibly be triggering for some readers.
> 
> Also, I apologize for posting this without responding to all the comments on the last chapter - I absolutely treasured every comment and you guys made my day, but I had a baby three weeks ago and it was all I could do to finish this fic. Hope you enjoy!


End file.
